


Watch Over Us Tonight

by gala_apples



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bondage, Character Turned Into Vampire, Dubious Morality, Multi, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:30:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7268317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a Lavender Caste vampire means appreciating immortality by keeping record of the flash-in-the-pan lives of humans. Being the Queen of the Lavender Caste means knowing all those lives like they’re her own. Sometimes that leads to obsessions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch Over Us Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day Two of the Mavinsmeg event, prompt Royalty.

Meg shifts impatiently as she waits for Lindsay to get back to the castle. The Reign House switches ascendency in a mere five years, and Meg has full intention of remaining the queen of Lavender Caste. If that’s to happen, however, she needs to fulfill the requirements of her role.

Of those loyal to her, all but one have already come home. She’s already received dozens of reports, the lifeblood of her reign. Lindsay is the sole dawdler. There are a few things that might have happened. On the positive side of the spectrum, she might actually be safe somewhere, but hasn’t bothered to check in because no progress has been made. On the negative side, she might have had her cover blown, and is nothing but ash in the wind. On the truly abysmal side, she might have been swayed to abandon the Lavender and join one of the four other Castes. Meg has no way to find out until twilight tomorrow.

That is, unless Lindsay comes to her private quarters shortly after nine am. It’s a bleary time, one no vampire would wish on another, aside from perhaps the Navy Caste, those barbarians. Meg doesn’t have the luxury of sleeping through the sunlight hours, not as Lavender queen, but her household should all be in bed. It hadn’t even occurred to her to check if Lindsay was home and awake.

“Late night?”

“I knew you’d be up,” Lindsay replies, sidestepping. It’s a fluff statement. Of course Meg is awake when everyone else is sleeping. When else does she have time to memorise the hundreds of case studies she’ll need to know perfectly when rivals challenge her in Reign House for the rule of Lavender? What’s slightly more meaningful is that Lindsay sees no danger in interrupting the queen. And even that isn’t particularly questionable. Meg has long made it clear that of all her lovers, Lindsay is the most valued.

“Who did you watch?” Meg asks.

“Um. Might have done a little more than watch?” Lindsay stumbles in her response. It’s a bit worrisome. Technically those of the Lavender are supposed to run campaigns of non-interference, but oftentimes a human needs a bit of a nudge to get onto a different path, one less travelled. Lindsay is high enough -a handmaiden- to be given permission to nudge without contacting Meg first. If she’s bothering to mention that she has interfered, that likely means it went poorly. 

“Come to my room? I have a gift. Maybe.”

Meg is half expecting Lindsay’s big surprise to be sexual in nature. Silk sheets on the bed, a double ended dildo, a package of razors. It would be very Lindsay to distract from a problem in the making with multiple orgasms, until she can fix it herself. She’s proven wrong when Lindsay slips her key into the keyhole and twists. Beyond the door is a man on the hardwood floor, neatly trussed in ropes. The ties are neat, and extensive. It’s obvious Lindsay’s spent hours tying him. Normally that would still be a sexual surprise. Not today. Meg knows this man. It’s Michael Jones.

It’s not often that Meg leaves the castle to observe humanity. Sometimes it feels like she’s drowning in the water of their one-drop lives. She doesn’t regret joining Lavender Caste and she doesn’t regret striving to hold her Queenhood, but there’s no denying that the deluge of information her court brings her leaves her little time for collecting her own.

Gavin Free, though. He’ll be gone from this life in a mere sixty years. They’ll need to separate far before that, lest he figure out what she is. But for these fleeting moments he is someone that Meg will put down her duties for. In part, at least. There’s no denying that his life is one of her case studies. One of the most interesting things about Gavin is how he’s drawn towards people who treat him badly. It works well for Meg, since they can only date at night like a dirty little secret, and at least half the time they have plans she has to blow him off. She’s not the only one it works for though. The closest relationship he has is brutal, all insults and threats. Watching from afar she’d think they hated each other, if it wasn’t for Michael being the topic of conversation five times out of ten when she’s with Gavin. _You need to meet Michael_ , he says. _The funniest thing happened when I was at the bar with Michael_ he says. _So then Michael said, right, and then I was like_ he says.

For a while now, Meg has been fascinated by the way Gavin and Michael stare at each other, but never do anything. She’s been alive hundreds of years. She understands unrequited love. This isn’t that. She understands codependency and the fear of changing things. It isn’t that either. She doesn’t understand hesitation, and the incoherence of it is what makes them a brilliant study.

And now Michael is nude and bound on the floor of Lindsay’s quarters. He’s flushed red with what’s presumably anger. Lindsay’s made a rope gag, a monkey fist ball gag, and it’s got his lips spread. He’s trying to shout at them, but the words are muffled. Meg stands at the edge of the room, at first. Watching. But with each obscured invective she glides a little closer. It’s so easy to imagine Gavin in the room, and Michael screaming this way at him. His skin is so flushed, patchy in a way that shouldn’t be sexy. He’s straining against the ropes, arms in particular. Meg has no doubt that in his own mind, he’s throttling the both of them.

She’s on him before she knows it. She’s not of the Olive Caste, she knows better than to turn everyone she sees. But the blood is so close to the surface, and the red flushed heat of it wins over. Meg sinks her fangs into him and drinks until he’s pale.

“You could, you know,” Lindsay says. It’s a huge overstep, hierarchically speaking. No wonder she was hesitant in Meg’s room. She essentially created a situation in which Meg would be driven to create another vampire. But the other option is leaving Michael unturned, incinerating his corpse and allowing Gavin to think himself abandoned. Not only is it cruel, it wouldn’t even make for an interesting fork on the case study of Gavin Free. Killing a loved one has been done since time immemorial. There’s nothing that could come of it, no unexpected reaction that would add to her Lavender status.

Meg licks the sweet taste of a stranger’s blood off her lips. Savours it. Then, with no other choice, bites her own wrist and tears deep enough that it won’t heal for several minutes. She presses it against Michael’s cooling neck and watches her Othered blood mix into his human supply. It’s a Punnett square in action, her dominant blood overcoming his.

When he wakes up, he’ll be different. The five Castes deal with that moment very differently. Burgundy would give a boring speech about his lineage. Navy would introduce him to someone else turned the same night, and demand they fight. But Meg is the proud Queen of Lavender, and as such, her immortality is about stories. If she kept Michael here until he rose, he’d be forced to join Lavender. What is that, compared to letting him loose into the city and seeing what his next move is? Vampires aren’t entirely without morals, but the blood changes more than the body. Will the hesitancy between Michael and Gavin end now that Michael is a different man? Or maybe all the fun was about pushing morals, seeing how close to the razor’s edge they could get with cruelty before it became too much. Maybe there won’t be any thrill to it anymore.

However it turns out, Meg has to know. “Return Michael to his apartment.” 

“Are you kidding?” Lindsay exclaims. “It’ll be ten in the morning! It’s sunny today! I’ll be wiped for days.”

“When you get back, you can sleep in my bed to recuperate.” Not that Meg can afford to spend a lot of time in it with her, but it’s a gesture that speaks volumes. She’s the Queen, she doesn’t snuggle with just anyone.

She also doesn’t just make dates with anyone. At eight that night though, Meg’s at the nearest Cineplex, waiting for Gavin to join her so they can decide what movie to see. She’s dying to find out what happened during his day. Gavin wouldn’t be Gavin if he didn’t have a Michael story to tell her, she just has to wait to hear it. And it can’t be that bad -she can’t have gotten him raped or mutilated- because he didn’t cancel their date.

“Hey,” he says, slinging his backpack onto the small table in front of her. Technically it’s seating for Burger King customers only, but the one employee couldn’t care less.

“Hey Gav. How was your day?”

“Outlook changing.”

Oh, here they go. Maybe Michael did make a move bolstered by his newfound vampiric amorality. “Oh really? How so?”

Gavin’s grip on his backpack tightens. “When Michael says a purple haired bint bit him and turned him into a vampire, I had to believe him, didn’t I? Because I’m bollocking sleeping with her. Aren’t I?”

This is not the way Meg saw this happening. Very interesting. Ten to one he has a stereotypical weapon in that backpack, a water bottle filled at a church, or a broken off piece of fence. “Vampires? Seriously?”

“Can we not do this?” he asks in a stiffly accented tone. “We’ve had the ghosts conversation before, you know we both believe in the supernatural. And the way you only meet me after sunset, and never stay the night, and you don’t feel anorexic when I touch you but you don’t eat... it’s kind of obvious, innit?”

“For the record, I don’t burst into flame in the sunshine. We just get exhausted, like eight days into a two week flu tired. And I don’t stay the night because I have things to do.”

“Fine, whatever. Bit of a relief. Or it would be, if you hadn’t turned Michael. That’s what I don’t get. Why Michael, not me? I could understand not me, if it’s a Edward Cullen, only turn your soulmate thing. Who am I, right? But you haven’t even met Michael, just heard about him.”

Meg’s not going to explain how much she truly knows about the man, how she’s been watching him since one of her servants told her about a codependent British man he’d just started observing, and how compelling the second hand reports seemed. “Lindsay brought him to me. I couldn’t say no.”

“Lindsay’s a...?”

“Most of the people I’ve talked about are.”

“And what’s he supposed to do next. Since you decided to turn one more person you know into a vampire, what’s he supposed to _do_?”

“Find a Caste.”

“Find a ...wot?”

Meg sighs. “Vampire society- not what you pick up from Twilight or Dresden Files. There are five royal branches, five kings or queens. Each has a very distinctive method of operating. Michael will have to figure out what works best for him. I’d suggest not Burgundy though, they’re bound to be complete snobs. He might be willing to eat shit now, but it’ll get old in a century or two.”

“What does that even mean then?”

“Burgundy Caste is all about bloodlines, tracing them through accomplished families. They’re the closest to actual royalty, as for how their next king or queen is decided. Navy Caste are full of assholes too. They’re always challenging each other to duels and fights to the death. Reign House has had to pass strict guidelines that they not get humans to align with them, wars used to get started that way. Olive Caste’s the biggest. They’re the free roaming vampires, the only ones that don’t have a hierarchy. If Michael doesn’t clearly align somewhere, they’ll swoop in. As long as he doesn’t go for the crown he’ll be fine.”

“And, uh. And if he does?” Gavin is tentative, probably imagining all sorts of nasty things. He’s not wrong.

“When Reign House is changing ascendency, Olive Caste attends en masse. They do a- It’s kind of like an obstacle course. Except every obstacle is deadly, and they don’t stop running it until there’s one person left. It’s how they combat the sheer amount of people they turn. They turn hundreds a year, but cull a thousand.”

“Right. Not even telling my boi about Olive Caste then.”

“Citrine Caste is based on music. Like ‘poor Beethoven shouldn’t have died so young, he had more to create, all musicians should be immortal’ style.”

“Michael likes beat boxing and making up songs.”

Meg shrugs. “That might be the best fit, then. Or Navy, but I’m assuming you don’t want him to die, and newbs go quick in Navy.”

“You only told me four. What’s the fifth?”

“Lindsay and I are Lavender. I’m the Queen, actually.”

Gavin goggles. “So when you said you didn’t stay overnight because you had stuff to do-”

“I meant running an empire, yeah. Lotsa stuff.” Meg doesn’t believe in being self effacing. If she wasn’t proud of being Queen, she wouldn’t be pushing so hard to make sure she stays such. Still, there’s no reason to list all her duties.

“And you still date me. I’m honoured, I guess. But I’m still hacked off about wee Micoo.”

“Yeah. I can see how you would be.”

“So what do you guys believe, or do, or whatever?”

“Human lives are so short, and ours are so long, that we owe it to you to remember you. We observe, mostly. Try to find the originality in people. Remember it, to honour it. The King or Queen is the vampire who can recite the most case studies. In some cultures we were revered as the shadow beside the story telling elder.”

“Is that why Lindsay likes him? He’s original?”

“You two are together,” Meg says honestly.

“So you just creep on people, your caste? Just watch and take notes?”

“Sometimes we intervene. People, they can get boring. It’s rare for someone to make a big move when there’s a safe move available. Sometimes we pull a Robert Frost and make sure the person we’re watching takes the road less travelled.”

“That’s kinda fucked up,” Gavin says.

“Vampiric morality is a shaky thing, Gav.”

“And on that note, I’m going to buy some onion rings.” 

He gets up and sidles to the lone cashier. While he waits for his order Meg takes the opportunity to open his backpack. Sure enough, it’s empty apart from a hunk of sharpened two by four. Meg’s not worried. Gavin’s not the type to lure her into false security and then stab her. It was a safety thing, and he’s already realised she’s the same as she was two days ago.

A few minutes later he’s back. He shoves a ring into his mouth and says contemplatively, “so my girlfriend and my boyfriend are both vampires, and my girlfriend’s girlfriend is a vampire. You’ll be telling stories about me way past when I’m dust in my casket.”

“Boyfriend?” Could it be? And will Gavin freak out if she turns the theory of her caste into practice and starts shorthand transcribing this conversation?

Gavin smirks. “When he couldn’t talk me into beheading him, he said he might as well date me. At least for the next fifty years, or whatever.”

Meg nods her agreement, keeps her opinion to herself. But truly, there’s no way that Michael will let Gavin age and die. They’re too interesting for a plebeian separation like that. And if by some stunner Michael doesn’t make that move, she might have to. The four of them belong together, far longer than a mortal’s lifespan.


End file.
